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Basic Obedience

Considering the increasing number of dogs living within our families as well as the more and more affectionate relationship between owners and their dogs, it’s important to make sure that we are actually aware what it really means to “own a dog” and especially are able to “put ourselves into our dog’s shoes” as this is the only way to see the world from our trusty friend’s point of view.

If interpreted in the right way, these reflections serve to help owners educate their dogs, raising a well behaved and socially acceptable pet that is a pleasure to have around.

The bottom line is that dog obedience training not only benefits you but in particular benefits your dog.

No need to leave your dog at home when meeting up with friends as your dog now knows how to stay calmly by your side.
No problems when approaching other dogs as you’ll be able to have control over your dog’s behaviour and your dog will learn that obeying is some fun time spent with you.
Considering the strengthening bond between you and your dog you will be able to do some canine sports activities together. This not only will bring some exciting moments for you but will also be a great source of gratification for your dog, giving satisfaction as well as psychological and physical stability to your trusty companion.

In this section we’d like to give you the first training basics in order to educate your dog and at the same time strengthening the bond between you and your trusty friend.

Dog training is the process of teaching a dog to perform a certain behaviour under various circumstances in order to become a socially acceptable companion pet and be able to easily adapt to all different life situations a dog has to cope with.

The aim being to teach dog owners to have control over their dogs’ behaviour, it is necessary to teach owners how to make their dog obey them and therefore avoid any unwanted behaviour.

Within this context, education means having control over your dog’s behaviour.

However, in order to have your dog obey you, it’s fundamental to consider the three aspects of how to establish a loving bond between you and your best friend:

1. affectionate relationship
2. hierarchical relationship
3. teaching the basic obedience exercises

1. The affectionate relationship

Talking about the affectionate relationship between owners and their dog’s, you very often risk hurting the feelings of an owner who thought to have established a “good” relationship between himself and his dog.

Unfortunately this relationship very often is based on incomprehension and excessive anthropomorphisation of the dog’s actions and reactions or results to be way too sterile with little or even no communication and affection.

A quality dog-owner relation is based on a healthy and balanced affectionate relationship and is even better when respecting the specific predisposition and age of the dog. While it’s fine being sweet and tolerant with puppies of 2/3 moths, it’s also necessary to be more resolute as the dog grows up.

Excessive affection, especially if you over baby your dog, can cause hyper attachment and dependency in your dog, blocking the process of behavioural development at the level of dependency of the puppy on its mother.

As a result the dog will have problems in developing autonomous behaviour and in adapting to different situations. Moreover, the dog will be unable to stay on its own as feeling safe only next to the owner (surrogate mother).

Going from one extreme to the other is equally damaging. The complete lack of affection is equally damaging as a dog needs to establish affectionate relationships with members of the own pack in order to build up a good social organisation.

As experience taught us, the best thing to do is to find a happy medium. All members of the family have to show their affection to the dog in a healthy and balanced way and furthermore respecting the dignity of our canine friend.

2. Hierarchical relationship

A dog entering a new family, in fact, enters a social group with the same characteristics of a “pack”.

As a consequence the dog will immediately start to communicate with each family member in order to clarify the own hierarchical position within this new strange pack by following its natural predisposition of developing more or less dominance. All family members have to learn to become “superior in hierarchy” to the dog.

In order to establish the right hierarchical relationship you should follow some suggested leadership building exercises:

Feed your dog always after you’ve had dinner: in nature “Alpha” eats first
Leader always walk through the door first: in nature the leader always goes ahead assuming the responsibility of exploring the territory.
Avoid letting your dog sleep on elevated places in the house such as your bed, the couch…This is important to conform your Alpha status: in nature the leader chooses the best place.
It should always be you taking initiatives of behaviour: in nature the leader decides for everybody else.
Never reward a dog that has done nothing to deserve a reward. A reward should be understood as a didactic instrument.
Teach your dog basic obedience exercises.
Never show weakness to your dog. You have to be a good, coherent and respecting leader.

3. Obedience exercises

This is a very practical oriented subject and serves to teach your dog some basic obedience exercises.

dog still next to owner
attention (“watch”)
the heelwork on leash, dog on your left ( “foot” ) and on your right ("in place")
the sit position ("sit"), the down ("down"), the stand ("stand")
the sit-stay ("sit stay") and the down-stay ("down stay")
the recall ("come")
wearing the muzzle
behaviour in the city

These exercises are sufficient for a good dog education.

For those who want to increase the quality of the training level there are some advanced obedience exercises.

These exercises should be carried out by every family member in order to achieve the same relationship between all owners and the dog.

MAIN OBEDIENCE TRAINING TECHNIQUES

Our aim is to control our dog when seeming to develop a completely autonomous behaviour.
Most of the time when dog owners consult professional dog trainers, it’s because their dog acts the way he wants and all attempts on the part of the owner to achieve a more suitable behaviour, come to nothing.

A dog actually does not act on autonomous decisions, but according to natural rules, innate characteristics of species predisposition, innate characteristics of individual predisposition also internal variables (for example psychological and physiological condition, hormonal status, organism…) and external variables, which aren’t innate but acquired, such as the environmental influence in which the dog lives or the type of the dog’s socialisation; the socialisation with animals of the same species (intraspecific) and with animals of different species (interspecific), generally human beings, in particular the dog’s family members.

These external variables have a great influence on the normal behavioural development in dogs and sometimes can change this process to such an extent that pathological findings of behavioural anomalies appear.

This is why it’s so important to establish the “right relationship”, allowing your dog to “build up” a normal development according to the natural and individual characteristics of the species. By doing so your dog will develop a good psychophysical balance and will be able to perfectly adapt to the owner’s as well as the society’s needs in general.

There are many ways and methods to train your dog obedience. The difference between the methods depends on the various principles they are based on, as well as on the typology of the training school in which they’re applied. When applying training methods you also have to consider personal aspects like style and professionalism of instructors with different mature knowledge expertise.

However, it’s very important to distinguish between two diametrically opposed basic methods.

Punishment based training

This training method is based on force and completely out-dated. There is no way to justify training methods based on force as this very often implies brutal punishment and is not at all suitable for the human/dog relationship which is supposed to rely on positive aspects and mutual love and respect.

Positive motivation training

That’s the way to do it. The dog follows a command for the desire to perform it and develops a positive and exciting relationship to the owner, and what’s even more important, a close bond that will not lead to conflict.

In order to apply this method, which implies the dog’s desire to follow a command, you must know and practise a specific operant scheme every single time you want your dog to perform a certain behaviour.

This principle works for teaching “basic” exercises as well as “very complex” ones.

OPERANT SCHEME

Motivation

This method is based on motivation. We have to be able to highly motivate our dog in order to achieve a quick learning of the desired behaviour. We can motivate our dog by increasing the desire for reward. Basically, what you have to do is, to get your dog to figure out that if he follows the command, he immediately gets a great reward.

Attention

This is the basic requirement for any kind of communication. A dog has to pay attention to the owner in order to receive his messages.

Stimulus/ Action

It is necessary to create a stimulus which makes the dog perform the action that corresponds to the desired exercise.

Every stimulus is then associated to a vocal command (secondary stimulus) which after several repetitions is enough to produce the desired behaviour.

Positive Reinforcement (REWARD)

It is fundamental to reward the dog immediately after he performed the desired command as the dog will retain it as something worth pursuing, and will repeat the behaviour every time he finds himself under the conditions that seem to cause this reinforcement (conditioning).

Rewards can be gentle voice, praise, treats, toy items, or anything that the dog finds rewarding.

Training phase

In order to achieve an efficient and long term training effect it’s necessary to consider three fundamental phases:

Learning phase

This is the first training phase and constitutes the teaching of exercises; teaching exercises means applying a communication technique that produces the desired behaviour in your dog. If the dog has actually learned the desired behaviour he must perform it immediately after our said command.

Correction phase

Once the dog has learned to perform a certain behaviour it is very likely that he starts performing it less precisely or the way he wants it to perform. He will do it wrong or not do it at all as if to put us to the test, a sort of provocation. This is something quite normal to happen and it’s also the time to pass to a correction phase by applying a correcting communication technique that makes the dog perform the exercise as precisely and immediately as before.

Maintenance phase

By maintaining behaviour we intend to bring the exercise performance to perfection (higher precision) as well as to expand the dog’s memory of different behaviour.

You can apply this phase by continuously repeating the exercises (practise)